


summers of fasting (hunger at last)

by coffeecrowns



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bathing/Washing, Canon Disabled Character, Chronic Pain, Disability, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone is Trans, Forgiveness, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Jaskier is a Professor with ADHD, Miscommunication, Multi, Mutual Pining, Nonbinary Character, Slow Burn, They're all feral idiots but Jaskier is the best at being a Real Adult TM, Touch-Starved, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, frank discussions about consent in re the djinn, i'm projecting, in the past and offscreen, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:26:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23126245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeecrowns/pseuds/coffeecrowns
Summary: About a year after the Djinn, Geralt, Jaskier, and Yennerfer fall into bed together. This doesn't actually get them together.Or“I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” She isn’t talking to Geralt this time. She’s talking to him, the simple human. “You wrote me into a song and you didn’t think I would notice?”She crackles with power like a bonfire, and just because he’s gotten older doesn’t mean he’s gone and gotten anything approaching a self preservation instinct. It doesn’t help that she’s as beautiful as his memory claims, with the crazier parts of their last meeting smoothing out into a funny story. It makes him feel a little better that Geralt is just as hopelessly caught up in her.“I was rather hoping you would notice,” he purrs, and Geralt looks between the two of them and all but rolls his eyes, the shithead, and Yennefer is smiling now.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 43
Kudos: 290





	1. sunk but sinking

**Author's Note:**

> Anyways, so I'm trans and disabled and read Witcher and Sorcerer training as a v disabled and trans experience. "Hey, do this thing that will make you stronger and more likely to survive but also make you sterile!" and Yen is literally disabled! 
> 
> Work title and chapter titles are all from various The Amazing Devil songs, with all apologies to Joey Batey. 
> 
> This bad boy is gonna be three chapters, I'm editing the second one and have half written/finished the outline of the third. If my midterms don't kill me, it should be all finished up within the week or so. 
> 
> All my love to Shannon, who sent me the eye emojis that fueled this fics existence.

The first time they fall into bed together, it’s literally that, falling through one of Yennefer’s portals into an ornate bedroom, not unlike the one he first met her in. It’s about two weeks until he turns thirty six, a nearly exactly a year after the Djinn. 

Jaskier feels every inch of his age, and he’s been traveling on and off with Geralt now for longer than he hasn’t. He’s been Jaskier now longer than he hasn’t. His second lifetime has been significantly better than the first sixteen years. He’s happy. 

Geralt looks the same. He has new facial expressions though, developed through his careful pestering and housebreaking of his Witcher. He’s been singing about Yennefer in taverns for months now - it took a solid three to write a song he felt he could sing in front of a crowd. It drove him up the wall all winter, even his students didn’t seem as irritating as her purple eyes and the way her and Geralt seemed to fit together. 

_Toss a Coin_ came to him immediately, but so did falling for Geralt. He’s been the same dumbass since he was seventeen. 

The thing about _Her Sweet Kiss_ is that it takes longer. He’s been playing bits and pieces of it over the year all across the continent. He hears a fellow bard pick up lines or melodies. Jaskier doesn’t hold it against them. There’s some great irony that the entire Continent is singing the words that haunt him. He doesn’t realize he likes her until it’s pointed out, rather rudely, he might add, by a colleague over one too many ales who insists: “The song is good enough, could you please serenade her so I can stop hearing it!” So there’s that. 

He loves them both, and the Continent is infected with his pining. 

He’s been singing this new song for two months when he finally catches up/ runs into/ is found by Geralt. His Witcher raises an eyebrow at the new selections. Jaskier keeps singing. When they retire to bed, Geralt bathes - he has new scars Jaskier will bleed stories out of, and he’s too skinny, which is a solvable problem, and god he loves this man. Jaskier says “I’m cold” and Geralt _hmm_ ’s but fetches the extra blanket and they crawl into bed together. The blanket is the softest one Geralt ones, and he seems to only bring it out for Jaskier, it smells like the scented oil Jaskier insists on taking on the road. Jaskier presses his cold feet against Geralt's shins who growls, and he says, “I missed you,” and he can feel Geralt’s smiles against his bare shoulder. 

_I love you too,_ Jaskier thinks, as he falls asleep. 

He’s been singing what will become _Her Sweet Kiss_ for nearly seven months when Yennefer shows up. She walks out of a portal into their campsite. 

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” She isn’t talking to Geralt this time. She’s talking to him, the simple human. “You wrote me into a song and you didn’t think I would notice?” 

She crackles with power like a bonfire, and just because he’s gotten older doesn’t mean he’s gone and gotten anything approaching a self preservation instinct. It doesn’t help that she’s as beautiful as his memory claims, with the crazier parts of their last meeting smoothing out into a funny story. It makes him feel a little better that Geralt is just as hopelessly caught up in her. 

“I was rather hoping you would notice,” he purrs, and Geralt looks between the two of them and all but rolls his eyes, the shithead, and Yennefer is smiling now. 

Despite falling into her bedroom, they actually bathe before they get on with the sex, which is incredibly enjoyable on its own. It’s been longer than he wants to admit since his last bath, and it has the added effect of making them all smell like each other, even to Jaskier’s human nose. Yennefer has a really nice collection of scented soaps. 

It’s equally rewarding watching the two of them relax into the hot water. Geralt has a look of bliss on his face. Yennefer lounges and all but melts into the water. 

He knows the vague aspects of her naked body, but there isn’t any danger this go around so he can actually appreciate it. Both her and Geralt have bodies much younger than their minds. He’s just a human who isn’t twenty anymore and he carries fat on his stomach that these two don’t. Yennefer eyes up all of him carefully. She can probably read the iron made scars on his chest and the faint traces of magic on his dick. She probably (hopefully) can’t tell he won it off a mage after a game of cards when he was nineteen. She doesn’t seem disappointed by any of it, which is a comforting thought. 

The sex is mind-blowing. He’s more than a little desperate to get his mouth on Yen, and Geralt gets him off with his clever hands. Later, him and Yen take Geralt apart methodically, revealing that she has a handmade wooden phallus that he just _has_ to experience. Then he returns the favour, fucking her while she sits on Geralt’s lap like a throne - who holds her and kisses her neck. It’s the hottest thing he’s ever seen. 

Overall, it’s probably the most fun he’s ever had with his clothes off. Jaskier assumes this is the start of something, it would be hard not to with the way Yen smiles with her eyes while Geralt sleeps in the middle of the day. There is a peace, with all of them falling together finally, after months, and he falls asleep proud of how they’ve figured themselves out. 

One the morning of the third day, they wake up, drink their tea, start a fire in the downstairs fireplace, and share a loaf of bread. When there’s nothing but crumbs on the plate and only the memory of jam and butter, Yennerfer says, “Glad we could get that out of our systems,” and Geralt _hmm_ ’s in agreement and by noon he is alone. 

He’s too angry to be sad until his fifth drink. Then he cries himself to sleep, alone in an inn, for the two most beautiful and stupid people on the Continent. He’s cursing them for not understanding how long a year is for him and himself for ending up here twice over. He’s always slept worse alone, but he feels it now the most. He’s genuinely cold, with no one to keep him warm. 


	2. (forget) forget me nots

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyway I'm having way too much fun with this story that is rapidly getting away from me - so here's the next chapter.

Geralt’s joints start acting up again a few months after he’s alone. It’s starting to get colder, which can be a trigger for them. He’s not about to submerge himself in cold rivers - or his knees are going to punish him for it, so he knows he’s not smelling or looking his best. 

He can still do his job. He’s a Witcher, pain is just part of it. 

Never mind the fact he’s closing in on a century, and no matter how strong he is, his body aches, deep in joints and bones that cracked and twisted and bore weight they weren’t supposed to have to. 

There’s potions for other things. There’s distractions, that helps sometimes. But Jaskier has a real life he has to get to, and he’s willing to admit he has no idea what goes through Yennerfer’s head. 

His body is his life, and he can handle when the world regards it as monstrous, or when it tries to prove it to him through pain, but not both. Not anymore, know what it’s like to have the two most beautiful people he’s ever known curl close around him without any promise of coin. 

He knows he shouldn’t want. But they made him feel treasured and he doesn’t know how to stop wanting to feel it again. The fact that it happened once is a miracle, a good one, and there’s no order or sense to these things. He didn’t deserve it the first time, and there certainly won’t be a second unless the world ends. 

Jaskier is a fully grown adult, and so he goes back to Oxenfurt after he stops smelling like _GeraltandYennefer_ , and he even bathes everyday like a civilized person and not half feral Witcher. (And he knows the smell will fade sooner.) He loves performing, and it’s kept him alive with both coin and reason to keep his heart beating. But he’s also an academic, despite the fact a man who he once considered his father told him he was too stupid for it. 

He uses his reputation and history at the college to take on teaching. He’s done this a few winters now, not all in a row. It’s nice. Then he buries himself in his work, tries his hardest to grade fairly, takes on both advanced classes of musicians who he’s excited to help mould, and teaches a low cost beginners lute, just because it feels like the thing to do. It’s nice to have a place to return to every night. 

He throws himself into work. He sets to work publishing another book of poetry, just because it’s been a few years of writing without a long enough period where he’s in Oxenfurt and can fight with his publisher until he doesn’t hate the book that bears his name. That takes him through the spring and summer. He doesn’t think about a Witcher or a Sorceress, who don’t have to look at the new life of spring or the young students picking up the instrument that has defined his life, knowing many will outlive him. Still, he’s happy. 

If he has to take on a horse every so often to leave the city - and the lights and scent of it, to lay in quiet under the stars - well, he’s an old man now. No harm in some eccentricity. 

If he writes poems after it that he won’t show the world, well, just because he’s a bard doesn’t mean everything he writes is for the masses. 

Yennefer spends the summer ruining a small town’s government. It’s not purely for the fuck of it either. She isn’t lonely, per say. She’s lived entire lifetimes surrounded by idiots in high courts. If she was prone to loneliness, she’d be dead by now. 

It’s an accident, mostly. There’s an Alderman drunk on his power, aging gracelessly, who gets it in his head to ban the performance of music. He’s also not a fan of magic. 

She even tries to do things by the book, introducing herself and stating her intentions. He flirts with her, which is normal. She can feel his fear press up against her mind, and it gives her a headache. 

She thinks briefly on the bard, who never felt fear in the  _ days  _ in her company. She misses the sweetness of his eyes when he uses similar lines as this cretin, but Jaskier had humour where this idiot Alderman tries to sell them straight. 

She refuses him, he predictably gets angry, she retreats long enough to put spells on half his advisors making them sing and dance every time the Alderman slaps his hands on his table, which he does constantly. She camps out in an inn, performs a handful of abortions and a gender correction. The young boy’s name is Yarrow, and he explains that he won’t be able to go home again after this, but he won’t get another chance. She admires that bravery, and she knows exile. She writes him a magical letter of introduction, that will be the right things to say to whoever he needs to get a job or into a school. She won’t take his coin.

She’s not trying to be a good person. But she likes giving people like her a better shot. It’s never easy or purely happy. But they are her favourite. Yarrow’s face is pure joy for five minutes after he wakes up. She does it painlessly, unlike her own. She’s revolutionized this use of magic, and is content not to take credit for it. She doesn’t want to deprive anyone if a local mage is a coward, afraid of her reputation. 

She spoke to Geralt, once, in the afterglow, what it was like for him. 

“Painful,” he said. “The kind of pain that hurts to remember.” 

Jaskier has no magic scars below his nipples, his are from an honest to god iron blade. It seems the human has a history of things he should be afraid of. 

Yarrow has friends, and they have friends, and she spends the summer magically putting bodies right. Some of them are old, some have scars like her own, some can pay, some pay in food or offering of services. She knows she’s fucked the third time she turns that last one down. She can’t get Jaskier’s smile or Geralt's soft eyes out of her head. 

There’s a cold snap early, mid September, which is dangerous for food stores and puts everyone in a bad mood. Jaskier cancels his classes, frowns over his wet and cold feet, but does his part to try and stop a recession by buying bread and expensive cheese, and on his way home runs into Geralt. He’s on a new Roach, this one has a different set of white markings on her face and doesn’t know him. Geralt looks like shit. Jaskier tells him this, Geralt stumbles and glares at the world like that will hide it, Jaskier takes one of his arms around his own shoulders and they make it back. 

Geralt isn’t as thin as the last time Jaskier saw him, but he is thinner than he should be following the summer season. His ribs press against his too tight skin when he breathes, and he breathes heavy. Geralt has an infected cut that intersects with the one of the magical scars under his pecs. 

Jaskier cleans the cut, wraps it with clean cloth, and once Geralt falls asleep, Jaskier heads out for the second time that day, buying rich but mild cheese, a hen and some potatoes, and some dark chocolate Geralt will actually admit he loves. 

Class is cancelled, so he takes his time feeding and taking care of his Witcher. In the morning, Geralt starts to protest it all, so Jaskier sits him back down and tells him in payment Geralt has to listen to some of his in progress songs. Geralt  _ hmm _ ’s but softly, and taps his fingers during one, and falls asleep sooner than Jaskier could have hoped for. 

It’s one thing for him to feel at home while singing. It’s another for his songs to make his Witcher feel safe. 

The cut heals, the redness is gone and it scabs over properly, and Jaskier thinks about kissing Geralt. He doesn’t. They’ve been sharing a bed and he knows how hard won the Witcher is and this can be enough. 

He’s still cold when he wakes up alone. 

Yennefer runs into Geralt while he’s on a hunt. Vampire. 

She’d heard that the Vampire was ancient, and she wanted answers to questions outside of myths. It’s her hundredth birthday, and she isn’t planning on celebrating it. What a thing it would be, to be as young as she looks even if just for a conversation. 

Geralt is on contract because it’s assumed the Vampire is crazed in bloodlust and killing people recklessly. 

Despite everything about who they are as people, it isn’t actually fun for them both to be right. It takes them both to restrain the Vampire, who they take turns feeding. They come out of it with matching fang scars on the inside of their arms, just below the elbow. 

_ Thank the Gods,  _ Yennefer thinks to herself, knowing she would die upon seeing Geralt submit his neck like the stories go. She also is glad to see his more practical solution, because she was trying to figure out how to create the drama of a neck bite when she knows damn well she can’t position herself that way. Her spine burns inside of her, her nerves not getting with the program that they aren’t on fire anymore. She’s used to working around the pain in her body, but it’s frustrating now. 

Geralt has to use every bit of his inhuman strength to keep both the Vampire and the memory of kissing Yennefer’s neck down when she allows the vampire to feed. 

Even after all their work, the Vampire won’t speak to them. They just laugh at the Witcher and the Sorcessoress in front of them, foolish children who marvel at them when they shift forms and take off. The black bat abandons them, and Geralt says, “Fuck.” 

Yennefer says, “Not a fucking word to the bard.” 

“Why the fuck do you think I’d want to remember this?” Geralt all but yells in response. He can’t stop thinking about how Yennefer’s song haunts him across the continent, in some brutal sense of harmony with Jaskier. 

She doesn’t yell back, she just goes, and that’s that. 

It starts off as a perfectly sensible book tour. Jaskier has a name for himself, small as it may be, and there’s royalties to be made, and he has no interest in teaching the fall semester. He leaves Oxenfurt with sensible but fine clothes, a reasonable stipend from his savings (he’s a fucking adult!), a trunk of books to sell, and absolutely no camping gear beyond a few survival staples needed to travel alone between towns. 

He runs into Geralt three towns from Oxenfurt. He’s sold his trunk of copies. Geralt is after an ogre, and Jaskier has never seen him fight a creature that large before. It sends his brain running, and Geralt says, “Fine,” because he knows when he won’t win. Jaskier knows he isn’t angry about it though. Even better, he knows this Roach still, who lets him braid flowers into her mane when he runs out of ink and he pops a callus on his palm and can’t play or write. She understands that he needs something to do with his hands. She’s a good sport and a better listener, especially once he gets a flower crown on Geralt’s head. 

Between the coming winter and the fact he wasn’t planning on camping, they share the bedroll. The best part of Geralt’s fall is falling asleep with his head on Jaskier’s chest, listening to the other man’s heartbeat even out into sleep. 

So, there’s the whole thing with the dragon. 

Geralt sits alone at what had been a happy campsite. It takes an hour for regret to set in. Witchers don’t have feelings, Witchers don’t get involved, Witchers aren’t human. But he does feel and now it’s so much. He’s deeply interwoven with these people, and with the continent, and he’s not convinced it made him worse. Well, not until now. If he isn’t human, he’s something close enough to love these ones. 

The ones he’s just lost. 

Fuck. 

He hasn’t cried for a very long time (He isn’t human, he doesn’t feel like a human would, he doesn’t even know what it might mean). But at some point, he realizes he’s never going to taste the chocolate Jaskier sometimes buys for him again. The bard won’t be stupid enough to come back, and no shopkeeper wants to have him it in long enough to find that stupid fucking chocolate. 

He hasn’t cried in so long that he doesn’t recognize the feeling at first. He worries, thinking that the feeling in his chest is something getting tight and hard and might be a poison. Then the tears are falling. He’s stuck there for a while. He lets the fire die down and tries to learn to breath around the new feeling in his chest. 

Yennefer was joking, when she remarked on not being able to get rid of Geralt at the start and the bottom of the mountain. She wasn’t joking after the dragon, and that kiss, that powerful kiss. She isn’t joking several months after the fact, when she’s hearing a different bard sing a song that’s clearly about Geralt taking on a troll. 

There’s only one sensible thing to do, but she doesn’t rip out that bard’s tongue. Instead she spends a week tracking down her Bard. It’s easier than she thought: she assumed she would have to navigate around Geralt, who she does not wish to see. Turns out Jaskier is a professor, which she wouldn’t have guessed. Turns out she owns a book of his poetry. 

A quick portal opens into what sounds like a beginners lute class, and she’s standing in the middle of it, holding Jaskier’s poetry, and she absolutely refuses to look like an idiot. 

“Get out!” she commands. 

“Great work! Same time next week,” the bard calls cheerfully out to his fleeing students.

“Hello, Yennefer.” She doesn’t know what to make of his tired tone or the way he’s trying to hold his  _ jealousyregretpain  _ away from her. 

Instead, she holds out the book at him. It’s an old book, it’s a first printing, and he looks at it like it might bite. “Turns out I’m a fan.”

“Do you want me to, um, sign it?”

“It might increase the value when I sell it.” It’s clearly the wrong thing to say, a light goes off from behind the bard’s eyes. She feels the urge to hit something. It might be Geralt. It might be herself. 

“You too?” she asks. She hasn’t made it this far on pure spite alone. 

“Fucking Witchers,” he replies, shaking his head. They don’t mention their brief shared history of just that. 

“I kept hearing your songs of him,” she says with no malice or ill will. It’s on purpose and everything. 

“Fuck, I’m not even performing them-” the Bard mutters something that sounds like “should have killed him when I had the chance,” and Yennefer regrets not ripping out that last Bard’s tongue out after all. 

“Write me into another song. At least to get the other ones out of the continent's head.”

Jaskier looks lost for a moment. Then he picks up a quill and a book and looks at her with something a little feral in his eyes and says: “Tell me about yourself.”

Geralt is haunted across the continent with melodies he’s tapped along to with lyrics about a clever, purple eyed survivor eating hearts. There’s a jig about laying curses and outwitting them. There’s a ballad of a white wolf, ravens, lovers. It reminds him of a lullaby, which he then recognizes as a song Jaskier has played him to sleep. 

It has the opposite effect now. He lies with his guilt, stops staying in inns, and tries not to think about his heart. 


	3. place your smile in mine

Jaskier plays The Lion Cub of Cintra’s Fifth, Seventh, Eighth, and Tenth Birthday Feast’s. The worst one is the tenth birthday, the first after the prince and princess pass. They leave the young couples seats open at the grand table, and instead little Ciri sits where Geralt did so long ago. It’s incredibly distracting to see white hair out of the corner of his eyes where his brain thinks Geralt should still be. He doesn’t want to see Geralt, not since he walked broken hearted down a mountain. 

The mood is somber all across the hall. Cintra’s lion cub has some royal blue sewn into the otherwise black mourning gown. It’s been six months. When he eventually gets a smile on the ten year old’s face he considers it a victory. The kid carries grief in their eyes the same way Geralt does. 

Jaskier isn’t a young man anymore. He isn’t the even smaller, poorly named child he was before that. He doesn’t dream of any great Destiny. He tries to trust that things will work themselves out and leave it at that. But it feels like the universe is staring down at the emptiness Geralt left behind in this room. He feels anger not just at Geralt, but for him. 

There’s still decent odds he’ll deck Geralt next time he sees his Witcher, but Jaskier wishes the man was here. 

  
  


“Wait, so why are you mad at Geralt?” Jaskier asks her when they’re both drunk on excellent champagne that Yen, he calls her Yen now, privately, in his chambers. 

“He bound me to him, with the Djinn!” 

All the blood in Jaskier’s veins turned to ice. “Did you not want, was it forced-” he can barely finish the sentence but she is somehow his best friend and if he has hurt her this way he is going to have to kill Geralt then himself. 

Yennefer sees the look on his face, and says, “Bard, I could hurt you if you ever put your  _ eyes  _ where they didn’t belong, to speak nothing of your penis.” 

“But you shouldn’t even have to worry about that, I hope, sincerely, that you’ve never felt-” To both of their surprise, he’s crying. “We didn’t, right?”

“No,” Yennefer says. “I never felt like I was fighting from within my head or fear or anything like that.” 

Jaskier can finally breathe again. 

“Jaskier, have you ever felt that way with a lover?” 

So much for that thought. 

“Not in a long time.” He hears himself say. “People don’t look at this body that way, not in the same ways. But before, when I was younger. I don’t tend to talk about it.” 

Yen nods, offers her hand and he takes it until she wraps her arms around him. He focuses on his breathing. 

“Thank you,” he says, after breaking away. “I don’t understand fully the Djinn situation but I believe you and want to know whatever you have to say.” 

“I thought the way you did, when I found out about his wish. After thinking about it, I know the spell didn’t work like that. Considering Geralt’s knowledge of magic, I’m pretty sure he was just doing whatever he could do to save my life. I’ll forgive him if he ever comes to apologize.” 

“I’m still angry.” His mouth has surprised him for a second time in one night. “But I miss him.” 

“You’re angry  _ and  _ you miss him,” Yen corrects gently. 

“We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it,” he says, making her laugh, and downing the rest of his glass. 

Yen spends the night, and nothing else happens. They sleep. Jaskier so hates sleeping alone. Something in his chest heals when he wakes up to see she’s stayed. 

  
  


The fall of Cintra is bad. Jaskier hears rumors of fireballs and Queen Calanthe’s, who eventually came to like him well enough, defeat and death. He thinks of little Ciri all alone, Geralt without his Destiny, and when the smoke and ashes from Cintra block out the sky, he steals and horse and rides. 

If Geralt can find Ciri, and he isn’t giving up on Destiny now, they’ll go North. 

The rumours speak of Yennerfer of Vengerberg fighting in the North. 

There’s only one sensible thing to do, and apparently it’s to go against the flow of refugees heading south. 

Yennefer survives, which is nice and surprising. She rests for a few days in the back room of a couple who recognize her. She performed the correcting magic on one of the women. Alicia, who is like her, couldn’t pay at the time. But it’s been fifty years, and her and her wife have run a store that’s turned a steady profit. 

“Destiny is letting me repay my debts,” Alicia replies when Yennerfer tries to protest the danger she’s putting them in. “Eat your soup and let an old woman find her peace.” 

Yennefer eats the soup. 

Alicia reports updates as she gets them. Nilfgard is running rampant, and there’s no news on Geralt’s Child Surprise - the Lion Cub of fucking Cintra. She recovers and makes plans to track them both down. They’re going to need all the help they can get. 

Ciri has nightmares. It’s been a rough few weeks. Things are going better for them, they’re safe now. Well, they feel something approaching safety. Geralt is tall and big and scary looking, and he doesn’t scare them at all. Not when his first instinct was to laid his big arms around them and gave them all the time they needed to catch their breath, to feel something solid and steady. Not since they’ve watched him talk to Roach, softly, or bring out a nice smelling soft blanket just for them. He tucks them into the bedroll and everything. 

They worry, briefly, that Geralt will be offended by the fact they’re still scared, that they still wake up screaming. He just sits with them, and doesn’t look at them like they’re a monster even though they can level forests by accident with a scream. 

Ciri admits they’ve killed people. They don’t have to look Geralt in the eyes or anything, which helps a little bit, but doesn’t stop the hard marble of guilt in their throat. 

“I am sorry,” he says. The words seem foreign to his tongue, but sincere nonetheless. “You shouldn’t have been in that position. But I’m glad you survived.” 

“Me too,” they say. 

  
  


Yennefer has been thinking about being a mother longer than she’s been thinking about being a  _ girl. _ There’s a pang of grief when she first lays eyes on Ciri, memories from years ago that sting. She is not the same woman she was on that mountain. 

That said, her second thought while looking at Ciri is how she’s more than happy to die for this kid. Ciri looks like their adopted father, but magic sings through their veins. She decides she wants to be wrapped back up in this story. She wants to take this on. Besides, if Yennefer knows one thing, it’s how  _ not  _ to teach magic. 

To start with, she offers Ciri a choice. 

“As long as I travel with you, I will tell you whatever you wish to know. And if you want more, all you have to do is ask.” 

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Ciri says, chewing on their bottom lip. “At least, no one who doesn’t want to hurt me.”

“Your powers saved you life,” Yennefer guesses. Ciri nods, and won’t meet her eyes. 

“None of that. You need to survive. Let’s talk about Chaos.” 

Ciri starts to relax about half an hour into her lecture on magical theory. Their eyes are clever and soft, and Yennefer has never taught before, but she loves it. At least for this student. Yennefer teaches Ciri to meditate, to sit peacefully with chaos, and the kid falls asleep with their legs crossed. Geralt lets her tuck Ciri in. 

Then she joins him by the fire. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. 

“Oh?”

“I just wanted to save your life. I didn’t wish for anything else, but I didn’t tell you that. There was no way for you to know that. And I was wrong, on the mountain. You’re doing really well with Ciri.” 

Then he clamps his jaw shut, as if to avoid saying anything else, or possibly to avoid starting crying. 

“I forgive you,” she says. He lets out a deep breath. She lets him relax. He  _ hmm _ ’s softly, and she wants to shake him, just a little bit. She loves him, destiny or no destiny, but she’s going to let him set the pace. 

That said, she does want to make sure he at least knows where the path is. “Jaskier will probably forgive you.”

Geralt snorts, “If he’s smart he doesn’t want to see me again.”

“Don’t pull that shit.” She’s angry on the Bard’s behalf and on her own, and whatever little feelings that are tying the three of them together. “You probably won’t have a choice in the matter. You should think about what you’re going to say.”

“Fuck,” he says. But from the look on his face, he knows she’s right. She’ll leave it there. Geralt can put his shit together from here or he won’t. 

  
  


Geralt has been alone too long. He doesn’t know what to make of Yennefer back in his life. He barely knows what to do with Ciri, who is supposed to be his child. But he can’t stop thinking about making something of a home with Ciri and Yen and Jaskier. With the people he loves, damnit. 

Doesn’t mean he’s prepared to run into Jaskier, bloody, half starved, and panicked. Jaskier bows to Ciri, greets them with “Your Highness,” and a gentle smile and sarcastic wave at Yennefer, and pretty much immediately starts screaming at Geralt. 

Which is fair. 

“-You left me on a mountain for no good reason, just because you were scared and hurt - Gods, Geralt!”

“I’m sorry,” he manages. “I hurt you, I know, and I’m sorry.” 

Jaskier looks shocked, genuinely shocked. He tries to make sense of Geralt’s apology, and looks at Yennefer, like this might be her fault. He takes a deep breath. 

“Right then. I forgive you. But I’m still angry, you bastard.” Then Geralt’s Bard leaps into his arms, Jaskier wraps his arms around Geralt’s neck and buries his face into Geralt’s neck. 

The part of Geralt that was worried Jaskier wouldn’t live through this war starts to heal with Jaskier’s heartbeat echoing in his ears. He just holds his Bard close. He won’t be the one to let go first. 

  
  


They’re on the way to ruins of Kaer Morhan. It’s the last safe place, for now. Autumn is rapidly overpowering them. Food is getting scarce. Yennefer has a plan, once they get close enough, to steal enough food to see them comfortably through the winter. But they can’t do it until they’re close enough to carry said food, and they can’t do it more than once unless they want to be tracked. 

There’s one day, where Geralt takes down several wild birds and Jaskier finds a ripe blackberry bush, and they’re all able to feel full. Jaskier plays and sings, and Ciri sings along, because these are songs that haunt the best memories of their childhood. All three adults wish it could have been longer, but they know Ciri has been forced to grow up rapidly. All they can do now is ease that burden as much as they can. 

For now, they have blackberry stained lips and are laughing in a duet with Jaskier. It’s a well earned moment of peace. 

Yen loves to travel, and she loves to take advantage of the body she’s been given. But she isn’t built for this sort of thing and her back is sore. It hurts in the bone deep way. There is lightning under her skin, too deep to combat. 

They just keep moving, and Yen keeps moving, and they make camp, and Yen goes to collapse onto the bed roll and every single joint in her back cracks. Both Ciri and Geralt startle at the noise. Jaskier comes closer. 

“Are you in pain?” Jaskier asks. She nods. She can trust him with this. 

“Can I touch you? I’ve been told I do a good massage.” She nods again. It’s not like she has anything to lose. Jaskier sets to work. Geralt and Ciri take on setting up camp. She hears them move around her, but she narrows her focus to Jaskier’s hands on her body. 

“Where did you learn to do this?” she asks. His hands stop, briefly, and she feels deep anger at herself. “You don’t have to tell me.” She says. 

Geralt has come and sat next to Jaskier, and she can feel the Bard’s relief. She also feels it. It is nice to have a stable point. 

“My body became safe before it really felt safe if that makes sense,” Jaskier begins. “I grew up at court, only child, only daughter, you know how it goes.” Yen doesn’t actually know if the Bard has told Geralt, but judging by the resigned anger she feels from him rather than hot shock, she guesses they’ve had this conversation. 

“I wanted my body to have a use, I guess. Something good. I bought the time of professionals and I learnt a lot, and I liked this one a lot. I like making people feel safe.” 

“You do,” she says. “The first few decades of my life my back was always used against me. But I trust you to be where you are.” It’s nice, having Jaskier’s hands on her back. It won’t help forever, hell, it doesn’t fully help now. Her back still hurts. It’s nice to be close to him like this. It’s nice to have her back bring her something more than pain. 

Kaer Morhen was once a great castle. Now, there’s only one section well suited for the four of them. There’s the old kitchens, the pantry and cold store, a small office behind the main oven which is immediately claimed by Ciri. 

Yen tucks Ciri in with Jaskier’s blanket in the closest thing Geralt has to a home. She kisses Ciri’s head. She relaxes, knowing she’s done this one thing, kept this one child safe. 

Ciri is their child, for as long as Destiny will allow, and Yen can find her peace in that. 

Above the kitchen is a bedroom with a comically large bed and plenty of space for the three of them. None of them want to be alone, not on that first night. 

When the three of them fall into bed together for a second time, it’s just that, falling into bed, barely managing to get out of their rough clothes, and falling asleep. 

In the morning, they wake after the sun is bright enough to shine through the windows. They’re all tangled up in each other, Jaskier in the middle. He turns to Yen, smiling at her, “Goodmorning, Beautiful,” and she flicks him on the shoulder and he just smiles wider. He goes to poke Geralt’s nose, and says, “I missed this.” Geralt  _ hmm _ ’s softly, from a deep part in his chest. 

“I love you too,” Jaskier replies. Geralt does the only thing he can think of, which is to close the distance between their mouths, carefully choreographing his movements, moving a hand to cradle Jaskier’s cheek. 

Jaskier’s lips are softer than he would expect under the conditions. Jaskier deepens the kiss and brings a hand of his own up to the back of Geralt’s head. There’s a third set of hands, Yen’s and there’s a pit of guilt in Geralt’s stomach for leaving her out, but she puts a hand on his shoulder and wraps a leg around Jaskier. She then insists, “My turn,” taking Jaskier’s lips to her own. The two of them are breathtaking. Yen turns to him, and he knows what her lips once felt like, and now it feels like coming home, knowing Jaskier is right there and part of whatever this is. 

  
  
  


They reach a level of stability, which means Jaskier catches Ciri going through his clothes. They flush red but look nervous like they’ve done some wrong and don’t know how to confess. Eventually, Ciri says: “I never knew mens clothes could be so colorful and fine. I wanted to be just like you, as a child.” 

Jaskier doesn’t say anything as cruel as  _ But you are a child _ , and instead makes an offer. “Ciri, if you want, you can wear whatever clothes you wish.” 

Cir bites their lower lip. “What if I want more than clothes?” 

“You have three adults who would do pretty much anything to make it happen.”

Their voice is nearly inaudible. “What if I don’t want to be a girl?”

“Then we’d have that in common, Little Lion.” At his reply, Ciri finally looks at him. He manages a smile for this child he’s been looking after, from afar, who’s like him.

“You’re like me?” He hears all the other questions Ciri doesn’t ask,  _ I’m not a freak,  _ and  _ There’s nothing wrong with me? _

Now he lets joy cross his face, like he’s performing, telling an exciting secret. “So are Yen and Geralt.” 

Their eyes widen with delight. Then they wrinkle their nose. “I don’t want to be a boy, either.” At that Jaskier laughs, just at the look of indignity on their face. 

“I think we can manage that.” 

By the time the snow falls, they actually have a good handle on things. Jaskier is the only one who can cook, and takes pleasure in teaching the other three. Ciri enjoys baking bread with him. He also teaches them to tailor clothes without losing any fabric, so they can grow into some of his doublets. It takes them some practice, but they love the jewel tone jackets. 

Ciri and Yen get along like a house on fire, and considering Ciri’s skills with magic, there’s a few close calls where it’s almost literal. Yen sometimes spends more time trying to think of nonabusive ways to teach certain lessons than actually teaching, but it’s well worth it to see the pride in Ciri’s eyes as they learn to harness their own chaos. Yen also starts teaching them the theory behind gender changes, giving Ciri all the information she can about the body they have to live in. 

When her nerves light up on fire or migraines strike, her boys take care of her. When Geralt’s joints rebel, she heats bathwater for him and Jaskier massages what he can. 

Geralt teaches Ciri to fight, to hunt, and to find and identify plants. They feel their body change with strength and muscles, and are proud to help feed their family. They like sparring with Geralt, watching as he slowly has to actually think and work to fight back. 

It’s not all easy. All of them are a little traumatized, prone to panic and nightmares. They’re just in the best position they’ve ever been to help each other through it. Often all four of them pile into bed together. Even though none of them have any idea as to what the future holds, it’s reassuring to know they’ll be taking on together. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all right, that's a wrap folks. thank u for all the love this story has gotten!


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